Nokia has filed a patent application with the USPTO that sets out some ideas for a wearable device that one would sport jauntily encircled around one’s wrist. This is, as Engadget points out, Nokia’s own play for the increasingly spicy smartwatch game.

The application, number 20130271495, describes something a little different from the essentially digital watch-like innovations that Samsung, Pebble, and others have already released. Nokia envisages a multi-screened device that may be gesture sensitive to fingers placed on several screens. Some of the segments may even be interchangeable. The filing notes:

Each screen presented on or capable of being presented on the display of a segment of the multi-segment wearable accessory may be considered a virtual segment, and the number of virtual segments may be greater than the number of physical segments of the accessory.

Essentially Nokia’s looking beyond the very early generation of smartphone-companion smartwatch, and is imagining what kind of utility we’d be looking for in a wrist-worn wearable a few years down the line. This makes great sense for a patent, of course. The question is, would such a device get Microsoft’s approval (assuming it would be an MS device)?